


Reboot

by Hideous_Sun_Demon



Category: Designated Survivor (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Compliant, Chuck should have been in season 3, Gen, Hannah’s death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 11:58:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19172812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hideous_Sun_Demon/pseuds/Hideous_Sun_Demon
Summary: “Chuck, I’m...so sorry about Hannah. I know you two were close.”Chuck shuts his eyes. Exactly what he’d hoped not to hear. The typical condolences. When they’d worked together Aaron had been dismissive of him, mostly, but he’d also been direct. He’d never sounded this much like a politician.“Why,” Chuck repeats, and his voice cracks to a thousand pieces, “didn’t anybody tell me?”





	Reboot

**Author's Note:**

> Am I furious that Chuck wasn’t at Hannah’s funeral because the writers forgot he existed? Yes.
> 
> Will I ever get over it? No.

Computers really aren’t as complicated as some people think. When a computer freezes, when it’s completely deadlocked, all it usually needs is a reboot. Power off, systems down, so it can recover. It can function again.

Chuck wishes people were as simple as that.

He’s sitting on the ground, tracing the spiderweb cracks criss-crossing his phone screen from where it had hit the floor. The call had only been a minute long, a courtesy call from some higher-up in the FBI who’d remembered what he’d done before moving back to Analytics. _Hey, Chuck, I know it’s late, but I thought you’d want to know about your friend_. An afterthought. Chuck doesn’t even make the FBI’s need-to-know list for most cases, especially not CIA-related ones, not even when it’s this. Not even when it’s her. He’s trying to reboot, trying to think, trying to breathe—

They waited to tell him until after the funeral.

He could have found out himself, if he’d really wanted to. He’s a nobody in the FBI, especially now, but all that means is that he’s the best at looking and listening in on things that he isn’t supposed to know about. But when’s the last time he’s tried keeping up with Hannah? After she’d been dropped so unceremoniously by the FBI, he’d been warned in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t leave Hannah Wells well enough alone then he’d soon follow. He’s faced worse over the years, but while he’d missed Hannah—

_god he misses her so much it’s all he can feel, like it’s all he’s ever felt—_

He’d also missed safety. He’d missed the simple security of a job where he usually knows what to expect. So he hadn’t gone looking, instead just waited for the phone call that he’d felt so certain was going to come one day. Her voice on the phone telling him that she needed him. When he’d answered his phone tonight, her name was already on his lips.

_It’s CIA business, so I can’t tell you much, but it’s Hannah Wells. She’s—_

His phone isn’t dead, just cracked. Chuck scrolls through his contacts with tear-smeared vision and fingers that won’t stop shaking, searching for a number he hasn’t had reason to call in nearly a year. He wants answers, even if he knows it’s too late. And even if—he knows for sure as soon as he hears the curt voice of Aaron Shore answer—he won’t be getting any.

All he can force out is choppy breathing. It’s only until Aaron gives a sharp sigh of impatience that he finds his voice. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

It takes Aaron a few seconds. “...Chuck?”

Chuck sniffles in reply.

Aaron sighs again. It’s softer this time, but it still carries the tightness of someone checking the clock. “Chuck, I’m...so sorry about Hannah. I know you two were close.”

Chuck shuts his eyes. Exactly what he’d hoped not to hear. The typical condolences. When they’d worked together Aaron had been dismissive of him, mostly, but he’d also been direct. He’d never sounded this much like a politician.

“Why,” Chuck repeats, and his voice cracks to a thousand pieces, “didn’t anybody tell me?”

There’s a long, empty pause. Chuck can practically hear Aaron chewing his words. Finally, he says. “That wasn’t up to me. This was CIA business, and FBI—“

“You’re NSA,” Chuck squeaks out, even though he knows it means nothing, really. He can hear what Aaron’s really saying: Chuck doesn’t matter. Even if he’s the one who’d patched her up after that car crash, the one who she’d saved from a goddamn gas explosion, the one who’d watched her nearly destroy herself over Damien Rennet, the one who had been by her side since all this began. Chuck is irrelevant. Even if it had been up to Aaron, he probably wouldn’t have remembered to call.

Chuck’s breathing is being eclipsed by hiccuping sobs. He must sound ridiculous, and definitely not worth the time of the National Security Advisor—or the campaigning Vice President, for that matter. It’s not until Aaron speaks again that Chuck realises the other man hasn’t already hung up on him.

“I’m sorry.”

The hesitation, the drop in pitch—there’s something real in those words. Something that reminds Chuck that, all that impossible time ago, Aaron had cared about Hannah too. It gives him hope.

“How’d it happen?” he asks; a desperate whisper. It kills him, but he needs to know what he should know already: what trouble she’d gotten herself into, whether she’d been alone, whether it had been quick, whether she’d been in pain—

“You know I can’t tell you that,” Aaron says, and Chuck’s hope dies. The moment of quiet solidarity dies with it. He isn’t talking to Hannah’s friend, he’s talking to the next Vice President of the United States. It’s right there in Aaron’s voice as he continues, perfectly scripted and perfectly worthless: “Hannah died in service to her country, she was a hero—“

“I gotta go,” Chuck gasps out, hanging up on Shore and letting the phone drop again. A second ago his stomach had been lurching in disgust, but now he feels nothing but the grief paralysing everything from his vocal chords to his useless fingers. He sobs, and he sobs, and he doesn’t stop sobbing. His phone is ringing again. Maybe it’s Aaron, or someone else from the FBI, or anyone else in the world. But, impossibly, his mind immediately jumps to that phone-call he’s been waiting for since he and Hannah parted. He knows it can’t be, but as long as he doesn’t answer he can let himself pretend, let himself imagine her voice on the other end of the line, asking for him. Chuck thinks he’s going to be waiting for that phone-call for the rest of his life.

He’s still collapsed on the floor, and he lets the phone ring out to nothing. He can’t be rebooted—his hardware is corrupted. He stays frozen.


End file.
